Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

A correspondent writes: "When Europeans came to the New Jersey and Maryland tidewater area, they found oak forests that seemed like open parkland. As farming in the area became more and more marginal, someone decided to let the land go fallow to bring back those oak forests. What they got was not oak but maple. The oak forests were the creation of the native Americans who set fires to open the game trails and processed acorns for flour. So, which is original the oak or the maple?"

S.M. Stirling: "'Prior to the Russian conquest (and the Soviet period, especially) there were no "nations" in Central Asia.' There are, now. The Soviets, for their own reasons and in wilful ignorance of the Law of Unintended Consequences, set out to give the Kazakhs et. al. national identities--complete with flags, national standard languages taught in universal public schools, national rituals, a 'history' embodying national myths, and so forth. It worked astonishingly well, considering how brief the Soviet period was, and the post-Soviet rulers have continued and consolidated the process."

S.M. Stirling: "The rise of the West was no accident; nor were the institutional forms it took.  They were the result of a long and rigorous Darwinian process. The nation-state is also, of course, the only stable format for democratic politics, which require a strong sense of group identification to work.  Democracy, rule by the people, necessarily means rule by A people--a historically grounded, legally bounded People of State.  Which is why, for example, Czechoslovakia became the Czech and Slovak republics. To be more precise, England has been a nation-state since the Wessex kings conquered the Danelaw and started calling themselves 'Kings of the English'. It's had foreign dynasties occasionally (1066, the Angevins, the Stuarts, the Hanoverians) but it's been a going concern ever since. France became an effective national state a bit later--being much bigger and more internally varied. Spain a bit later than France, Portugal a bit earlier. Denmark and Sweden around the same time; Norway was under Danish rule and then Swedish, but was a distinct national unit pretty much from Harald Fairhair's unification. Germany sort of slipped halfway through; but note that the HRE was known as the 'Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation' for a long time.  Germans knew perfectly well that they were a nation; they just didn't have the accompanying state."

Ashok Rao ‏@AshokRao95 6h "@delong Why thank you for the help, which is never futile against trolls with catchy accents :-)

.@stephenkinsella @Noahpinion Now how do you estimate a DSGE, given your sample contains a cloud around the origin and 2008?

.@tylercowen @Noahpinion On second thought, better to send you to my post from two weeks ago: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/monday-delong-being-stupid-self-smackdown-watch-expansionary-fiscalists-vs-expansionary-monetarists-and-the-federal-reserve.html …

.@tylercowen @Noahpinion I am [eager to say the recent rise in interest rates has surprised me]! I am! In fact, let me accelerate my post for tomorrow...

Felix Salmon Firmly Believes Not in the Inflation-Expectations Imp, But in the Tightening Tommyknockers... http://bit.ly/19Iuw8U

Ben Lawsky ‏@BenLawsky 29 Jun "FT calls Banker's New Clothes 'the most important book to have come out of the financial crisis.' No argument here. @anatadmati"

Top Conservative Cat ‏@TeaPartyCat "That awkward moment when John Roberts says there's no racism in America and Paula Deen's cookbook sales pick up after using the N-word."

Tim Duy ‏@TimDuy "For those of you who haven't seen it, this @gavyndavies piece on Fed policy is real good. http://blogs.ft.com/gavyndavies/2013/06/28/how-the-fed-lost-control-of-short-term-interest-rates/"

Michael Drake ‏@drakeslaw "@delong @yeselson That's not fair—DB also wants Hispanics to hate lazy Hispanics who don't wait their turn in line before immigrating."

.@yeselson As I said, I’m rdng Brooks as addressing NYT readers--who do not fear Reihan Salam--not rdrs f Knoxville Gun-Fanciers’ Monthly

Ashok Rao ‏@AshokRao95 "I've written my essay for the Always-Wrong Club. To whom at RedState may I submit? Or are applications outsourced to Peggy Noonan?"

.@joshtpm &, says DB, we can hope that when Indians and Hispanics see lazy Blacks for what they are, bogus rainbow coalition will explode!

.@yeselson Even more “exciting” is your attempt to conduct a nuanced argument on Twitter! Like a land war in Asia is “exciting”

.@yeselson Rather light on synergies and heavy on tensions, I thought. What has DB done in past to justify your hermeneutics of goodwill?

.@yeselson “more ethnic jostling… flashpoint… between immigrants and African-Americans… bogus… supposed rainbow coalition”

.@yeselson What’s [Brooks's] argument? Do I misread it as: “teach Indians and Hispanics to hate lazy Blacks, and explode bogus rainbow coalition”?

.@ModeledBehavior @Noahpinion I very much hope Knoxville Gun-Fanciers’ Monthly syndicates David Brooks. But I really doubt it...

.@yeselson I’m still hung up on the bad history near the start @mattyglesias View conversation

.@AshokRao95 Brooks Repub, would be editor of National Review had Buckley not insisted next ed be a Christian. NYT readers 70% Democratic

.@mattyglesias But R U on board with Rand Paul’s constitutional amendment to prohibit recognition of Vulcan-human marriages? @yeselson

.@yeselson I’m with @mattyglesias on neg part. The pos part of column is “Don’t fear Reihan Salam!” Not something NYT readers need to learn.

@pdacosta “madmen in authority, hearing voices in the air, really slaves to” non-defunct economist Michael Woodford

.@Noahpinion Brooks writes to try to move NYTimes readers rightward, not to move RW crazies toward lower levels of insanity

.@Noahpinion Brooks says: “we will no longer be an outpost of Europe, but a nation of mutts”; misses we have always been a nation of mutts

.@Noahpinion 10 minutes reading about Serbs and Croats & any belief that “looking like each other” is key to ethnogenesis falls away

.@Noahpinion Indeed. But that isn’t Brooks’s main point. Brooks fears we face a unique crisis of ethnogenesis. #derp

.@Noahpinion but their complete and lazy failure to do their historical homework, and think about it http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (12)

.@Noahpinion People like David Brooks who now claim that America faces a crisis of ethnogenesis tell us nothing http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (11)

.@Noahpinion Puritans were a different and distinctive race than the other white guys, and had responsibility http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (10)

.@Noahpinion In the 1960s my G-grandmother would still tell me that we who were descended from West Country http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (9)

.@Noahpinion and if you go further back you better be (a) Quaker, (b) Scots-Irish, or (c) Puritan http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (8)

.@Noahpinion In the 18th C Benjamin Franklin’s contemporaries viewed Germans--“Penn Dutch” with suspicion http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (7)

.@Noahpinion white. Go back to the 1880s and the Irish aren’t white either--a Protestant Anglo-Saxon country http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (6)

.@Noahpinion looked at Al Smith as David Brooks looks at Barack Obama. And “Slavs” and “Latins” weren’t really http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (5)

.@Noahpinion really belong here. And before WWII Catholics didn’t really fully belong--the David Brooks of 1928 http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (4)

.@Noahpinion Cf. William F. Buckley's "God and Man at Yale" in which one of the main points is that Jews don't http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (3)

.@Noahpinion since time immemorial was a creation of the 1950s as "Judeo-Christian Civilization". http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … (2)

.@Noahpinion lacks historical perspective http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-dream-of-post-racial-america_29.html … The “European Civilization” that David Brooks claims America has been (1)

Julian Sanchez ‏@normative 28 Jun "Clapper unlikely to be charged despite admitting lying to Congress, b/c 'that's not how Washington works today'"

Matt O'Brien ‏@ObsoleteDogma "Marty Feldstein: Wrong, wrong, wrong on inflation since 2009 http://on.ft.com/11NUqD4"

Alex Seitz-Wald ‏@aseitzwald 28 Jun "It’s notable that the only misconduct in both the Benghazi and the IRS stories was committed by House Republicans." http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/obama-scandals-used-to-be-a-thing.html

Felix Gilman ‏@felixgilman "@delong i wonder if there's some connection between the fact that people believe milk prices are rising &the fact E.E. keeps telling them so"

edroso ‏@edroso "The GOP is becoming a white people's party, and @instapundit is tailoring his message accordingly." http://bit.ly/14eopUd

Jeb Lund ‏@Mobute "Failing an 'Are You A Libertarian?' test is the only non-fictional way to ace a Voight-Kampff test."

Antonin Scalia ‏@SCOTUS_Scalia "Yesterday I voted to overturn a legislative body. Today I said it was offensive for a court to do so. The difference is fuck you."

Noah Smith ‏@Noahpinion "Oh Peter Schiff, I am gonna troll you so hard your ancestors are gonna delete their online identities in shame…"

.@reihan from my house to campus, a 30-minute walk, a 10-minute car drive and then 5 minutes parking, or a 12-minus bus ride. Buses!

LOLGOP ‏@LOLGOP "Cornyn calls a bill that cuts the deficit by $157 billion over the next 10 years a 'budget buster'. The logic that helped blow the surplus."

Dylan Matthews ‏@dylanmatt "Cornyn says the immigration bill is a "budget-buster." Elsewhere, Doug Elmendorf stares into the mirror and wonders why he even tries.

• .@reihan: Windsor & Roe @RameshPonnuru http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/352202/windsor-and-roe-ramesh-ponnuru … for right to spend next 40 yrs putting up obstacles to GL marriages seems bad idea

Irin Carmon ‏@irincarmon "Once again: There is nothing progressives can say the GOP believes about women that is worse than what comes out of their own mouths."

Dan Froomkin ‏@froomkin "CIA won't let Senate investigators talk to torturers, then complains report is only based on ample documentation" http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-report-refutes-senate-panels-criticism-of-agencys-harsh-interrogation-methods/2013/06/26/ed53a908-de8b-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_story.html

Jim Henley ‏@UOJim "2. 'Only the perfect have standing to dissent.' Meanwhile the powerful can be grotesquely scandalous. Banks can forge titles. Whatevs."

.@MattZeitlin Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral... and the eating ofsnails to be immoral?

.@HeerJeet Surely there are already posts on Volokh or Slate or by Bainbridge or Althouse explaining how Scalia is a consistent jurisprude?

marcsobel ‏@marcsobel 26 Jun "@delong I published Evil Fighting Beagle on Amazon. Main character is DogbreathGalactica, a galactic agent. He somehow appeared on Twitter."

The Daily Edge ‏@TheDailyEdge "Reince Priebus: 'SCOTUS has affirmed racism no longer exists, so we will now proceed full-speed with our racist voter suppression plan'" #VRA

@Noahpinion Then you have a perfect 1st Amendment right to have the police arrest Erick Erickson if he ever leaves his home unveiled...

Noah Smith ‏@Noahpinion "What if Erick Erickson's face is against my religion?"

AdamSerwer ‏@AdamSerwer "This week Thomas compared AA supporters to Confederates, said he'd overturn Sec 5, and found where his federalism ends: LGBT rights."

@delong @M_Gelin @AdamSerwer Insanity continues: Sen. Rand Paul calls for criminalizing marriage of Vulcan Amb. Sarek and Amanda Grayson!

.@jbplainblog Did you ever learn anything from the original Crossfire?

.@marc_haber No, reporters not allowed to have friends--only sources they haven’t burned yet! @jpodhoretz @cbellantoni

Paweł Morski ‏@Pawelmorski "Why is Hayek on Pinochet going to put you off if von Mises on Fascism didn't bother you?"

Richard Yeselson ‏@yeselson 24 Jun "@mattyglesias reworks old joke about economists; assumes "sane Republican party" instead of a can openers http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/06/obama_climate_speech_what_the_gop_should_but_won_t_do_in_response.html"

Robert Farley ‏@drfarls "Is Nate Silver paying those Politico guys to say these silly things?" http://bit.ly/11X1gkW #irresponsiblenottospeculate

John Aziz ‏@azizonomics "Today I learned I read more blogs than Leon Wieseltier. A lot more."

Danny Blanchflower ‏@D_Blanchflower "problem has been that the cuts were too fast and deep. Britain’s deficit will soon be twice that of Greece"

.@ryanlcooper Hippie-punching is Joe Klein's sole purpose. That and pretending to be a Senior Administration Official

.@reihan I apologize to you as well for being snippy, and resolve in the future to use Twitter for good, not evil… @delong

.@ron_fournier: "Serious question for Congress: James Clapper lied to you, wittingly. What precedent do you set by ignoring it?" @delong

I mean, to administer or stand by as crisis administers 9.3% deflation is remarkable policy… http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/on-the-failure-of-ben-bernankes-non-standard-monetary-policies.html

John Lewis ‏@repjohnlewis 21 Jun "Forty-nine years ago this evening, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi."